Site of the former Historic Africatown Visitor's Center

Site of the former Historic Africatown Visitor's Center

Memorialization of Urban Slavery in Southern Coastal Cities

slavery; memorials

A mobile home used to sit here, which housed the Historic Africatown Visitor's Center. All that stands here today is the remains of a dilapadated welcome sign, a parking lot, an ADA ramp, and what appears to be a memorial with gold busts to several nations in Africa. The Africatown neighborhood today is merely a community of poor blacks with little to mark its significant history.

This project was funded by Bernard and Anne Spitzer Travel Fellowship for research projects involving travel abroad and incorporating the study of architecture, landscape architecture, or urbanism.

My goal was to research, witness, and record how each of my chosen Southern port cities has dealt with its past in regards to urban slavery, and to begin making a record of this history. Although all of the locations I visited were major hubs of the American slave trade, these cities remain mostly lacking in admitting their full and complete history. The inaccurate and incomplete narratives, lack of memorials, and white-washed histories designed to appeal to the tourist industry do not tell the stories of the slaves in an unbiased and forthright way. So much of what I witnessed revolved around a very racially divided tourist industry, but I know that change is possible. The story of urban slavery is not just the story of African Americans in the United States, but the story of all of us, and the more we can understand this, the better off we all will be.

Whang, Maura

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Whang, Maura

Architecture and City Planning

T0569

Mobile, AL